Halloween at Kansai Gaidai was a spectacle I will never in my lifetime forget. Sure, in college you dress up to class sometimes if you have a funny outfit and of course you wear the sluttiest outfit that night and go to all of the Halloween parties that the different fraternities are hosting, but never, in the US, would you see something as crazy as what happened at KGU this Halloween! Dressing up wasn’t something kept just for the night at the parties. A multitude of students, both international students and Gaidai students, wore their costumes to class during the day. In the CIE lounge, where the international students mostly hang out, they set up a costume competition. You could sign up for one of four categories: General, Horror, Funny/Cute, or Group. They would take your picture and then post it up on the bulletin boards so people could come in and vote. I didn’t think there would be that many contestants and that not that many people would actually vote, but there were about 40-50 contestants in total and so many people came into the lounge to look at the pictures and vote!
Two of my friends and I joined the competition under the Group category and titled ourselves “Asian Sandwich JK.” JK stands for Joshikousei, which means high school girl. So we wore school girl uniforms, but then made our look sort of ‘gyaru’ meaning we curled our hair really big, wore heavy make-up and fake eyelashes. Our friends were really impressed and a couple even told me I should wear the look more often!! LOL! It took me about an hour that morning to curl my hair, and because my hair is so straight it hates to be curled so it started to fall out after a few hours of being at school!! So, no, I will not be pulling off that look on the regular. めっちゃ大変！Too difficult!
Some of the funniest costumes consisted of guys wearing girl costumes. One of my classmates wore a maid costume that had long socks but he shaved his legs where you could see skin. He even wore a wig and walked around carrying an adorable fluffy bunny stuffed animal/backpack. And when you took a picture with him he would make the cutest baby face in the world!! All of the girls were dying!! One of my friends, who is a Gaidai student, wore a JK outfit too, and even let us put the wig and some make-up on him! From behind it was sort of hard to tell that he was actually a guy because his legs are so darn thin!! Other people dressed up like Spiderman, Harry Potter, anime characters, Pokemon characters, Jackson 5, The Mystery Gang (Scooby-Doo), zombies, witches, Sadako (the girl from the Ring), policewomen, big babies, pizza (actually had pizza toppings stuck to his body and carried around a pizza box), nerds, maids, JKs, and a PANDA BEAR.
Not only was there this costume contest, but there was a costume fashion show!! (one of which I was not aware of until after we signed up…) There is a big stage area in the middle of campus which is where the event was held. All of the participants were held in the CIE lounge until the show was about to start and then they let us walk out there. When we got there the place was absolutely PACKED!! Every single seat in the stands was taken, people were standing all around the sides of the stage area behind where the participants were to be seated, and the 2nd and 3rd floor balconies were full of people watching too! Seeing all of those people and knowing I had to do something in front of them made me SO nervous!! But the event was one of the greatest things I have ever witnessed and participated in! There was a judges panel made up of some teachers who were all dressed up as well (Winnie the Pooh, a maid, a rocker, a nerd) and they got audience members to come and be judges as well. There were 3 hosts for the show, two were Japanese and one was from Hawaii so he spoke English. Each participant/group went up one by one on stage with an introduction by the hosts and could do a little performance. Some people just walked/skipped/danced around the circular stage and would pose in front of the judge’s table and wave and blow kisses at the audience, while others actually had a routine up their sleeve. The best routine was from a group of 3 guys all dressed like Spiderman and they did this dance to Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life” that was SO funny!! It mostly
consisted of a lot of sharply hit muscle poses on the down beats in the song that just worked so perfectly!! I was DYING. The whole Halloween Costume Contest/Party was like a real talent/fashion show! I was so impressed with how it was all set-up and how organized it was! And the crowd was actually very involved and interested! It was so much fun that when it came our turn to walk onto the stage I wasn’t nervous anymore! Our performance consisted of a little rhyme that we had to scream, but luckily they turned off the music so we could be heard. It had arm movements that went along with the words: “Ue (up), Shita (down), Migi (right), Hidari (left), Girigirigirigirigiri (circle your arms), Don’t Touch Me! (cross arms in front of chest, straighten, tilt head)” To my surprise, it was a hit!! So many people came up after the show and would do it back at us! We didn’t win the Best Costume or MVP for the Group category, but it didn’t matter, at least to me. I just had so much fun just participating in something like this that winning didn’t even matter! I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into, but I’m so glad I did!
Loving Life 